The present invention relates to an electrical connector, in general, and to a crimp type electrical connector having a reinforced wire barrel with an offset or webbed seam made from an integral blank, in particular.
One piece connectors having reinforced wire barrels have been used in the electrical terminal art before. For example, one reinforced wire barrel has been formed by folding an elongated section of the barrel portion about a transverse axis to position such section over the main barrel portion to form a double thickness and by then rolling such double thickness into cylindrical shape to form a wire barrel having a longitudinal open seam. Alternatively, two transversely extending wing tabs may initially be folded over the main wire barrel portion to form a double thickness, which may then be rolled into cylindrical shape to form a wire barrel with a longitudinal open seam, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,142,771. The reinforced wire barrel portions of these one piece prior art connectors suffer from common shortcomings.
In this regard, the one piece reinforced wire barrel portions have a longitudinal open seam that does not provide structural strength and integrity and does not provide totally predictable radial contraction during crimping. To alleviate these problems, the open seam may structurally be closed by brazing, but this adds to the cost and time of manufacture while detrimentally reducing the strength of thinner connector materials used for quick disconnect forms. Moreover, these particular open seam reinforced wire barrels do not have integral strain relief ferrules.